The grading system plays an important role in student learning. In their book Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College, Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Anderson state that "grading infuses everything that happens in the classroom." They also argue that grading "needs to be acknowledged and managed from the first moment that an instructor begins planning a class." Source: Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson, Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College, 2nd edition, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010, p. 1. The grading system used by a teacher can affect the incentives of students to learn the course material by.

Most teachers believe that some components of their course are more important than others, and it is normal that those important components are included in the tests or final works. If a student was able to know beforehand what subject the teacher considers most important, he/she could focus on learning those subjects only and would probably get a better grade. Or if the student knows that half of the course's grade will be based on a final project, then he/she can focus on completing the final project the best possible way. The rest of the not so important components will receive much less attention.

For example, I once had a teacher that assigned 1/3 of the final grade to attending class, and if you missed 6 classes you got 0 in attendance. The worst thing was that you needed 60 over 100 to pass the course and if you had 0 in attendance then your maximum grade was 67. Since we didn't know about this rule, we didn't pay that much attention to that specific issue and many students failed because they missed class 6 or more times.